[MW Forums]

Microsoft said that Office for Mac has been transitioned to Xcode in preparation for its development as an Intel-native system. more

[heisetax]

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Microsoft said that Office for Mac has been transitioned to Xcode in preparation for its development as an Intel-native system. <a href="/news/2006/08/07/msuniversal/index.php">[more]</a>

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With as many Mac programs that MS has cut support for &/or use of, do they really support the Mac anymore?
i'll be going to a Vista-Office 2007777777 demo tomorrow, Aug 8. Maybe I can find out about the Mac Open XML item.
Bill the TaxMan

[lkrupp]

Somebody, somewhere, HAS to come up with a reliable Office work-a-like for the Mac platform. Microsoft will continue to play games with the Mac platform until it dies the death of a thousand cuts.

[Nobody]

Hopely this new Word will not crash unexpectedly all the time. The only appliation that crashes on Mac OS X.
On the other hand "VB macros embedded within files will not be accessible". Does it mean the END of compatibility between some Word for Windows files and Word for Mac? If so we better get a replacement for Word...

[MacTel]

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Microsoft Messenger for Mac 6.0, a new version of Microsofts instant messaging application, is coming later this year, according to the company. It will include features such as federation with Yahoo! Messenger,

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Messenger will be on its way out as soon as iChat ties into MSN and Yahoo which was rumored to happen. That would be a cheap way out for Microsoft to cut development on future versions.

[bazaarsoft]

The item about dropping VBScript is VERY BAD. I never author docs with VBScript, but I get lots of docs with scripts in them for automation, particularly in Excel. This is going to be REALLY BAD for those of us struggling to hold on to our Macs in office environments where PCs rule.
Typical Microsoft ploy...

[kagharaht]

If thats true, then say goodbye to the Macs at my office also. I can't believe this.

[jhmaughan]

Am I the only MacBU fan out there? The MacBU makes a product, without which the Mac would be dead. Plain dead. If MS Office did not exist for Macs, we'd have long ago not only been sidelined but decapitated from any reasonable work in the world. The Mac would have been a toy only. Toward the end of the 1990s, Macs weren't in business or IT and were quickly slipping in the educational and even professional publishing markets. I think the fact that Office 98 came out, allowed many of us to retain our Macs in the work and collegiate environment until the more potent Apple (Steve's Apple) was able to gain traction and now control. Only in the last few years do we have a Mac that can show off many things, not just the fact that it runs office.
Right now Apple's laptops are taking off and i think huge portion of that is the adoption of Power/MacBooks in the business world. I was shocked to see how much Apple's market share has grown in the MBA program i finished last year. Without Office, no one would have bought a Mac in that program and certainly would not be using them once graduating.

[MacTel]

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The item about dropping VBScript is VERY BAD.

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Yep, I doubt they'll have converters to go from Applescript to VBScript and back again. Microsoft is plotting their Mac exit strategy. When Apple releases an Excel competitor that will be another nail in the Office coffin. Microsoft gave the time of five years that they'll be releasing Office for the Mac so that gives Apple plenty of time to get iWork up-to-speed and compatible with Office file formats.

[NeoX]

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Hopely this new Word will not crash unexpectedly all the time. The only appliation that crashes on Mac OS X.

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Have you looked at something else causing this? Perhaps prefs, fonts, Cache, etc.? In my years of using Office under OS X, rarely if ever has word crashed or quit on me...
As for the only application that crashes bit: that was a joke right? If not then you have never used Opera or some of the other third part browsers and other apps that crash constantly..
Regards,

[folklore]

No VB support is certainly a very bad thing. It makes me wonder about things like EndNote (a reference formatting tool) that I use on a daily basis. And my colleagues and I can seamlessly share files now... doing away with that makes the Mac a much less attractive platform for me.
Put more bluntly: If I can't work on my professor's complex Word docs, my PowerBook is literally useless to me in grad school. Open Office and Pages can open simple Word documents, but what about a 500 page technical report for the National Institute of Justice that includes complex tables, auto-generated table of contents, graphs, photos, EndNote formatted reference codes, etc? It's a lot to ask for a replacement software app. Maybe it'll be easier when MS Office uses XML, but we won't know until that happens.
Another advantage of MS Office over an Apple product is the ability to easily shift from PCs to a Mac and back - something I do regularly as I move from lab machines on campus to my PowerBook and back. It's rare that I have to hunt for a toolbar icon or command, since they're more or less in the same place.
In short, I love my PowerBook, but if I can't work on it I can't justify replacing it. I'm worried that in 3 years, I won't be able to use my Mac to collaborate with other non-Mac users easily. That, plus the unavailability of a GIS package and other statistical tools (e.g., HLM) on the Mac...

[Machound]

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As for the only application that crashes bit: that was a joke right? If not then you have never used Opera or some of the other third party browsers and other apps that crash constantly..

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Or "third party" browsers like Safari. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[rvparker]

I'm not sure I agree with all the gloom. While a native Mac version of Office would certainly be preferable, I don't understand why the lack of a Mac-based version office will necessarily be that detrimental, else why all the jublilation when Boot Camp and Parallels were announced? Seems to me that if you absolutely had to use the PC version of Word or any other Office application, you could, at the very least, use Boot Camp to run the application when necessary. And if Parallels or any of the other virtual applications run well today, they'll certainly run better in the future, making it highly likely that many Mac users who need to use a Windows-based Office app will be running a virtual version of Windows under Mac OS and slipping in and out of Windows at will. From Apple's viewpoint, I'd say that Boot Camp is a reaction to the fact that Microsoft will eventually kill Mac Office. With Boot Camp. Mac users can still use Office if they need to. In fact, I don't think it's hard to understand why Microsoft wouldn't consider killing Mac Office sooner than later, since a Mac User wanting to use Office in that event would need a Windows license in addition to a license for Windows Office. MS could book more revenue and cut out any continued development costs on the Mac side. Now, whether that's a good deal for the Mac end user is another issue. But when has Microsoft ever really considered that what's good for the customer is good for Microsoft? WGA is proof that Microsoft's philosophy is "What's good for Microsoft is good for Microsoft" and the customer be damned.

[kagharaht]

Well the jubilation for Parallels and BootCamp is not to run Office in Windows XP. BootCamp for the abiltiy to run games natively. Parallels for running business apps that will never get ported to the Mac. A few like Access, Project or using MS CRM which is dependent on Active X if you access it via web. At least with Office for Mac having nearly full compatability, thats a one big check mark in favor of considering Macs in the workplace without the added purchase of Windows license and compatability headaches for IT managers to deal with. Well minimum headaches with compatability.